Ponderings and Musings

So today I am off from work because I worked over the weekend, per my once-a-quarter responsibilities of on-call at work. I have to admit that I prefer this way to enjoy a Monday instead of getting back into the weekly work routine, but I don’t know that I enjoy working over the weekend to achieve this type of Monday. Nevertheless, I will enjoy it for what it is. The next time I’m on the on-call is in mid June. I can’t complain about that!

I am currently in the northern New York village of Lowville, sitting in a Wal-mart parking lot eating a Subway sandwich. I’m taking a break from my little project of the day. I am attempting to drive what used to be NY Route 12 before it was upgraded to a more prominent road in the mid 20th century (I think some time in the early 1960s, but I’m not certain on that). There are a couple of reasons that I am doing this but the primary force behind this is that I’m just a geek, especially when it comes to roads. I’ll be writing a separate blog entry about my findings of the original Route 12 once I get my facts straight and am able to look at some satellite imagery to confirm my findings today. So far I have driven through a couple of villages (Port Leyden, Lyons Falls) that I had never been to before, even though they’re less than an hour away from our home. They’re small and what I would call “industrial quaint”.

I have always enjoyed two others villages along Route 12, the Village of Boonville in Oneida County and the Village of Lowville in Lewis County. Boonville is home of the Oneida County Fair each year and still has a quaint business area that appears to still be doing well. I have family that lives near Lowville, which is a cool little village supported by the agricultural goings-on around it. I enjoy the rural charm of this area; there’s no freeway exit leading to the village because there’s no freeway within 30 miles of this place. Lowville is home to the largest wind farm in New York State, Maple Ridge Wind Farm. That’s the wind farm that my favorite road to drive in the summer, NY Route 177, passes through. Lowville is also home to one of a half dozen men I call mustache heroes, a well liked veterinarian named Dr. Peter Ostrum. I saw his picture on television once and his mustache made an impression on me. Google his name to find out why he’s the “most famous man in Lowville”.

Tomorrow my schedule is back on track and your Tuesday is my Tuesday. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my Sunday, which is your Monday, with a nice Sunday drive.

I’m sitting on the back patio at home enjoying the abnormally warm and sunny weather today. It’s been like this since our return from Florida. It feels like we brought the good weather along for a ride when we made that trek home last weekend but I know that they enjoyed the nice weather up here while we were gone too.

I’m home today because this is my weekend to work. This change in schedule happens every 13 weeks. Once you get beyond the fact that you have to work for the weekend the gig isn’t that bad. I have been in worse situations.

When I usually get a day off during the week I take the opportunity to go on some sort of road trip. I have a couple of favorite destinations in the Empire State that I like to visit on these day long trips; the Southern Tier and the North Country are both favorite areas of the state for me, but today I decided to stay at home since we had driven so much during vacation. Plus, my commute clocks in at 1 1/4 hours in each direction, so sometimes it’s good to skip putting extra wear and tear on my Jeep and on my body. To celebrate staying home, I babied the Jeep with an oil change and tire rotation (we both purred when the work was completed) and I have been doing geek things here on the back patio.

A little black and white bird keeps flying to the shruberry closest to the table and gives me a glance. I think he or she is trying to decide whether I’m harmless or not before hopping up to the adjacent bird feeder. Scott filled the bird feeder just before leaving for his latest tour of flying and they have already made a good dent in it. It’ll be ready for filling again when he gets back next week.

Earl has been out of town on business since yesterday morning but I received a SigAlert that he will be coming home tonight. That always makes my day better.

As I sit here and enjoy the backyard, I am noticing that the trees are starting to show signs of spring. The maples are starting to show the beginnings of the Leaves of 2012 and the evergreen trees are showing new growth. I think everything may be a week or two ahead of schedule, but I don’t think it’s something to complain about. I can’t remember having such a beautiful March in recent memory. Whatever is causing it (the natural cycle of things, HAARP, Global Climate Change, whatever), it sure is making this part of the country a little more enjoyable. Let’s hope we don’t boil away this summer though.

With my on-call I am working Friday-Sunday and then I have Monday off, where I then resume a normal work week next Tuesday. I’m thinking I might stay local again next Monday and, if the weather is still cooperative, plant a couple of trees in the side yard. Earl and I have talked about planting two trees in memory of our fathers; this might be a good opportunity.

It’s amazing how much one can enjoy life when they find enjoyment in their surroundings. I should remember to do this more often instead of running around trying to find it.

I seemed to have developed some sort of sniffly bug over the past 48 hours or so. The sniffles started on Sunday night when I went to bed. I got little sleep that night and had the sniffles and sneezes in full effect all day on Monday. This made returning to work after a week and a day vacation that much more pleasant. This morning I woke up congested but feeling better. As I write this during my lunch hour, I am feeling a marked improvement in my condition, though the congestion is still lingering around.

On a conference call today, it was mentioned that one of the intended participants couldn’t join us because, like me, they were on vacation last week and then had contracted some sort of bug and was at home sick this week.

That kind of sucks.

During the conversation a couple of people mentioned that these sorts of colds happen when one lets go of the stress that’s been building for a while. Your body has some sort of reaction to not being so tense all the time and all the bad stuff leaves by way of a grand sort of cold. I kind of think that’s what happened to me during our vacation. My work is relatively stressful, mainly of my own design due to the goals I set for myself along my career, and when I had the chance to relax last week at the House of the Mouse I took advantage of it. Subsequently, my body is purging all the bad stuff that’s built up and that’s why I appear to be getting over a 48 hour bug of some sort. This is just speculation, but I have a hunch that this is what’s going on.

And none of it’s a bad thing. It’s annoying to have the sniffles, but it’s not entirely bad.

My spirits are still good and I’m still feeling relatively relaxed so in the long run it’s all good. Less stress is always good.

In 1997 I attended my first radio convention. Orchestrated by a trade magazine called “Gavin”, I flew to New Orleans to hob knob with others in the radio and records industry and to check out a few new acts. It was at this Gavin Convention that I got to hang out with France Joli (best known for the disco hit “Come To Me”) and a Canadian group called Temperance, who did a remake of the Alphaville 80s hit, “Forever Young”. We were also to meet a new group called the Spice Girls, but they weren’t feeling the whole convention thing and they never showed up for their appearance.

There was a big cocktail party during the convention where anyone that was anyone would undoubtedly be in attendance at and I found this to be rather exciting. Coming from a market that could be best described as “midget”, I was fascinated with the special effects and the costumes and the atmosphere of the whole ghastly like encounter. There was a lot of fog, it was rather dark, Pat Boone was running around in a leather jacket and a bad wig and people were doing the Kathy Griffin-say-hello-to-no-one routine. I was asked on a couple of occasions if I had passed by N’dea Davenport or if I had engaged in any conversation with Stacy Ferguson from Wild Orchard (she’s now known as Fergie)¹. The answer to both questions was ‘yes’. N’dea was quite nice but Stacy was kind of doing her own thing but she seemed nice as well. I had a very good conversation with a head of lettuce which was actually a human head dressed up as a head of lettuce sticking up through a table. No photos allowed. The lettuce will wilt.

Finding myself in a conversational vacuum of undoubtedly my own creation, I wandered over to a table that had a bunch of wooden slabs with little pastries on them. Though it was a darker corner of the whole affair, I could make out the round bits of this and that that were being presented and I took a couple, put them on a plate and started munching on them. Expecting a confectionary delight in my mouth, I was a little surprised at what I tasted. I was must have had a weird look on my face as my friend Lynda came over to make sure I was doing ok talking to heads of lettuce and the like.

“Are you having a good time?”, she asked in her southern drawl.

“I am. I can’t believe this party!”

“Oh, they convention parties are always like this. You’ll find out”, she replied with a big smile. The radio station had just been given “reporting status”, which meant that the industry cared what we played. It was something no one had thought we would achieve and being a reporting station made us very popular with the record companies.

“So much fog and lighting and lettuce heads!” I must have sounded like a country bumpkin fresh out of the cabbage patch.

“No expense when it comes to reporting stations, darlin'”.

“I’m a little concerned about these pastries, though. I think they’re bad or something. They taste like fish.”

“Honey, that’s not a cookie, it’s sushi!”

I was eating sushi and I didn’t even know it. I had never had sushi before. I thought I was nibbling at a Lorna Doone or something. The little old program director from Upstate New York couldn’t tell the difference between raw fish and a cookie.

“That’s alright, darlin'”, Lynda quickly interjected, always trying to keep me feeling at ease, “we won’t tell anyone you thought the sushi was a cookie.”

And she never did.

But it got me hooked on sushi. Imagine my delight this afternoon when Earl came home with some sushi for dinner.

Now if I could only have a Lorna Doone for dessert.

¹ Listen to me throwing around names from my radio days.

It is 55F in Central New York today. The snow is melting rapidly and the sunshine is shining brightly. Today is the cooler of the next few days, tomorrow it’s suppose to reach 60 and for that there is much rejoicing. Tomorrow night Earl, Jamie and I leave for the House of the Mouse, with our actual stay starting Saturday until the following Friday.

Life is so very good.

As the sun beams into the Jeep as I write this, I can’t help but wonder why we try to kickstart our healthy living habits and the like with the onset of the New Year, when we should be doing it at spring time. I don’t know about any of my gentle readers, but I don’t really like the idea of trying to lose weight when the snow is (theoretically) piling up outside, daylight is at a minimum and it’s very, very cold out. Trying to shed a few pounds by hitting a gym in the dead of winter is crazy. Now is the time that I want to start being healthy again. With the onset of this spring like weather, now is the time that I want to get the extraneous details of my life that I have been ignoring back in order. With the impending rebirth of life after a (theoretically) long, hard winter, now is the time that I feel like really living again.

I think part of this has to do with suffering from the winter blahs. I try so hard to not get feeling glum in the winter time, and while the winter season is in progress, I think I’m doing an ok job at keeping a chipper spirit around but then a day like today comes around and I realize that I was feeling the same sort of seasonal depression that I feel every year. No matter how much I bathe myself in natural light or down Vitamin D tablets, I just don’t feel overly enthusiastic in the winter time. Spring rolls around and then I feel enthusiasm again. I’m thinking that I’m going to try to hit the gym at Disney a couple of times. I’m going to walk more than I need to. I’m going to limit my popcorn intake to “occasional” and I’m going to make sure that I make smart choices when choosing from the delights flashing on the overhead menu. It’ll be a challenge, but it’s something that I think I can do and I feel enthusiasm about taking this approach to the vacation.

When we get back from vacation, Daylight Saving Time will be in full swing (though I despise the practice of moving the clocks around very much) and I will be able to ride my bike after work again. I haven’t done that as much as I’d like to since starting my current job a few years ago, I’m going to make that change this year.

I just heard the ghost of Michael Jackson whisper “Make that change” in my head and it was really creepy.

I’m 43 years old so I’m a realist about what I can obtain health wise, but on the other hand, I’m only 43 years old. And I’m going to start a Spring Resolution right now to enjoy life to the fullest, feeling the best I can by doing the things I want to do to make it all happen.

I think Spring Resolutions are the ticket for me in the future. Let’s see how this first attempt at it goes.

And as a quick sidebar on the resolution thing – still not buying the latest incarnation of the iPad, no matter what they announce today, unless it comes with a daily full body massage.

My mind is churning through the typical Monday mush and I can not find the means to write a coherent blog entry today, so we’ll go with a picture of some pretty clouds. I took this picture on Saturday.

The jet black hair betrayed the age shown by the rest of her outward appearance. She had leaped out of the passenger side of an old Mercury that was parked right next to the front door of my favorite Dunkin Donuts. In fairness, the Mercury sagged more than she did, but I think they both wore garments of wood grain.

The Mercury was parked in a spot that was traditionally reserved for foot traffic, but in a snowstorm such as this, anything goes. She was just getting to the counter as I came up behind her to wait in line for my turn to place an order. I could already see my iced tea being assembled by the very capable counter people.

“I’ll have six dozen donuts, mixed”, the woman with the jet black hair barked out. I realize that I say “barked out” a lot on my blog, but she didn’t have a quiet voice nor did she have a pleasant voice. Barking something out is how I hear a lot of people place orders in establishments such as Dunkin’ Donuts. To me it sounds something like the canine variety of sounds typically heard when dogs are gossiping with one another. Barking is not a condemnation, it just appropriately describes how I hear this woman in wood grain.

“SIX dozen?” the girl at the register asked.

“Yes, six.”

“Oh, having a party tonight?” Pleasant conversation is always a good path to take when trying to have a pleasant retail experience.

“No”, she said. “My husband and I are worried about the snow storm tonight and we want to make sure that we’re stocked up.”

Apparently someone had already purchased all the loaves of bread and gallons of milk at the nearby Mini-Mart.

“They say this storm could last through tomorrow.”

I stifled a knowing laugh. People think I’m critical of the folks that live in these parts. I’ve been accused of being downright ridiculous. But this blog entry was just writing itself.

“Make one of the dozen all jelly!” Ok, the bark was replaced by a bit of a squeal with that one. Delight should always be recognized.

“Is today a cookie day?” My iced tea was ready and I was being herded over to another register while the six dozen donuts were being assembled.

“Not today”, I replied. “I have cookies at home.”

We’re ready for the storm.

I have never been one to enjoy talking on the phone. I don’t like calling people. I always feel awkward when I’m on a phone call. It’s ironic, because I work for a telephone company and I spend a good share of my week on conference calls, but I really don’t enjoy the sport.

Because I work for a telephone company, there’s motivational marketing messages hung around the building showing teenagers all giddy because they’re talking on a phone in their bedroom. The ads remind me of those ads from the 60s and 70s when Mom and Dad were rich enough to spring for a second line and a princess phone for the daughter, where she could talk from her bedroom. The kids of poor parents resorted to stretching the telephone cord across the kitchen and into the broom closet, where they could enjoy privacy. I have never had the urge to sit in a broom closet and the only excitement I feel about having a phone in the bedroom is that nowadays it’s usually a gadget phone so laden with extraneous features that it could double as a bidet.

My sister and her family are currently living in Italy. We have relatively affordable international calling plans on our phone but I’d rather just exchange email messages. In fact, I’m most comfortable exchanging email messages on most occasions. Sometimes a chat on an Instant Messenger or a video chat on Skype is nice, but in reality I’d just like to sit down and type what I’m thinking and then wait for a response at the leisure of the other party. I prefer email over Twitter direct messages and I really prefer email over Facebook messenger or whatever the hell that annoying thing that pops up everywhere is called. Email is starting to become the written letter of the 21st century; it takes time to sit down and write a coherent email that is worthy of attention. I write a couple of emails to Earl everyday. I usually sign them “Fondly”. He can feel the warmth and that gets us through until we can see each other.

I’ve never figured out why I don’t like talking on the telephone, by the way. I don’t know if it’s because of too many screwed up Chinese take-out orders or if it’s because I was called “ma’am” on one too many occasions prior to puberty or what because phone calls in general feel intrusive to me, but it’s something that I do because I must, not something that I enjoy.

Don’t tell the telephone company I work for that I don’t have a princess phone in our bedroom. I’ll have to hide in the broom closet or something.

As I move into my mid 40s this year (because 43 is not a mid-40s age, it’s still an early 40s age) I am slowly coming to the realization that my completely out-of-step existence with the rest of the world is becoming increasingly apparent; not because of my somewhat different thought processes or eccentric behavior, but rather because I think I’m getting too old for the ever-young gay demands of the community.

When I got home last night there were two stereos blasting in the house. Jamie listens to music that is not really my thing; I just hear gargling, shouting and guitars, but that’s just my take on it. There’s nothing wrong with the music, I just don’t go and seek it out, and because of the age difference between the two of us, I don’t find this surprising.

In the kitchen I heard the chipper jingle of “Kiss 108 FM!” After the chipper jingle all I heard was blips and bleeps and moaning sounds that were autotuned beyond any sort of musicality. I felt like someone was holding seashells up to my ears and then making trilling noises into a hole on the other side. I refrained from saying anything about this because it was obvious that Scott was enjoying Kiss 108 FM, heck, I enjoyed the station very much when I lived in Boston from 1988-1990, and I didn’t want to impede any efforts at supper that Scott was making. The thing is, Scott is a couple of years older than me and I couldn’t understand a word the robot on the radio was saying but Scott was singing right along. I couldn’t find the necessary capabilities within my brain to comprehend the electronic gargling sounds. I felt left out, old and obsolete.

Supper was quite tasty though.

A couple of weeks ago when Earl and I went on that really long ride in the Jeep, I actually looked at my watch towards the end of our dinner and made the claim, “Wow, it’s getting late!” It was 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night. Ten years ago I would have been readying myself for a night of DJing at the local club, where I’d do my thing until 2:30 and then possibly go to an after-hours party after helping get the bar cleaned up. I’m sure that’s what the kids do today.

When did I become so obsolete?

The other night I watched a clip (in error) of “Bionic Woman”, that awful remake of the 70s show where Jaime Sommers wasn’t really acting like Jaime Sommers. The show was dark and menacing and Jamie seemed very angry. When she jumped up onto a building using her bionics, the camera pulled back so that you could see the leap of 30 feet or. The entire leap was shown from ground to roof and it was embarrassingly obvious that there were cables and harnesses involved that had been computer-erased from the scene. What happened to using a little bit of imagination when we are only shown the beginning of the leap and the landing on the roof? Though this is a poor example, is it bad to think that it’d be better to engage my imagination while watching a television show instead of painting everything in such an obvious manner, however poorly executed that demonstration might be?

And while I’m talking about harnesses; I look at these pictures of young guys on the internet wearing leather harnesses that just go across the top of their chest and around their shoulders. All I can see an ill fitting halter top like you’d find on a beach near a trailer park. I don’t find anything hot about these new, mini harnesses. My understanding is if you’re going to be wearing a harness, you’d better be ready to be hauled up into the air by it like some sort of Cirque du Soleil Sex Act. And am I completely obsolete by thinking of Mary Lou Retton (which most people these days would seemingly say, “Who?”) because I thought of a dismount eligible for scoring if you’re engaging in a Cirque du Soleil Sex Act? If I barked out the name Mary Lou Retton while DJing in a club today, people would look at me like I have a propeller on my head. I know, if I barked out “Lady Gaga” people would either get all breathless with excitement or throw sides of beef at me (I know she does something with eggs and meat) but I couldn’t name a song of hers outside of the one where she sings her name a lot.

Maybe I’m more nuts than obsolete.